Peopled Landscapes: Archaeological and Biogeographic Approaches to Landscapes(34 Terra Australis)

This impressive collection celebrates the work of Peter Kershaw, a key figure in the field of Australian palaeoenvironmental reconstruction. Over almost half a century his research helped reconceptualize ecology in Australia, creating a detailed understanding of environmental change in the Late Pleistocene and Holocene. Within a biogeographic framework one of his exceptional contributions was to explore the ways that Aboriginal people may have modified the landscape through the effects of anthropogenic burning. These ideas have had significant impacts on thinking within the fields of geomorphology, biogeography, archaeology, anthropology and history. Papers presented here continue to explore the dynamism of landscape change in Australia and the contribution of humans to those transformations. The volume is structured in two sections. The first examines evidence for human engagement with landscape, focusing on Australia and Papua New Guinea but also dealing with the human/environmental histories of Europe and Asia. The second section contains papers that examine palaeoecology and present some of the latest research into environmental change in Australia and New Zealand. Individually these papers, written by many of Australia's prominent researchers in these fields, are significant contributions to our knowledge of Quaternary landscapes and human land use. But Peopled Landscapes also signifies the disciplinary entanglement that is archaeological and biogeographic research in this region, with archaeologists and environmental scientists contributing to both studies of human land use and palaeoecology. Peopled Landscapes reveals the interdisciplinary richness of Quaternary research in the Australasian region as well as the complexity and richness of the entangled environmental and human pasts of these lands.

Introduction

1. Peopled landscapes: The impact of Peter Kershaw on Australian Quaternary science  – Bruno David, Simon G. Haberle and Donald Walker

I. Archaeology and Perceptions of Landscape

1. Hay Cave: A 30,000-year cultural sequence from the Mitchell-Palmer limestone zone, north Queensland, Australia – Harry Lourandos, Bruno David, Nicola Roche, Cassandra Rowe, Angela Holden and Simon J. Clarke
2. An early-Holocene Aboriginal coastal landscape at Cape Duquesne, southwest Victoria, Australia – Thomas Richards
3. Aboriginal exploitation of toxic nuts as a late-Holocene subsistence strategy in Australia's tropical rainforests – Åsa Ferrier and Richard Cosgrove
4. Terrestrial engagements by terminal Lapita maritime specialists on the southern Papuan coast – Ian J. McNiven, Bruno David, Ken Aplin, Jerome Mialanes, Brit Asmussen, Sean Ulm, Patrick Faulkner, Cassandra Rowe and Thomas Richards
5. Otoia, ancestral village of the Kerewo: Modelling the historical emergence of Kerewo regional polities on the island of Goaribari, south coast of mainland Papua New Guinea – Bryce Barker, Lara Lamb, Bruno David, Kenneth Korokai, Alois Kuaso and Joanne Bowman
6. Cranial metric, age and isotope analysis of human remains from Huoshiliang, western Gansu, China – John Dodson, Fiona Bertuch, Liang Chen and Xiaoqiang Li
7. Not for the squeamish: A new microfossil indicator for the presence of humans – Mike Macphail, Mary Casey and Matthew Kelly
8. Science, sentiment and territorial chauvinism in the acacia name change debate – Christian A. Kull and Haripriya Rangan
9. Nature, culture and time: Contested landscapes among environmental managers in Skåne, southern Sweden – Lesley Head and Joachim Regnéll

II. Biogeography and Palaeoecology

1. The rise and fall of the genus Araucaria: A Southern Hemisphere climatic connection – Marie-Pierre Ledru and Janelle Stevenson
2. When did the mistletoe family Loranthaceae become extinct in Tasmania? Review and conjecture – Mike Macphail, Greg Jordan, Feli Hopf and Eric Colhoun
3. Wind v water: Glacial maximum records from the Willandra Lakes – Jim M. Bowler, Richard Gillespie, Harvey Johnston and Katarina Boljkovac
4. Late-Quaternary vegetation history of Tasmania from pollen records – Eric A. Colhoun and Peter W. Shimeld
5. Holocene environments of the sclerophyll woodlands of the Wet Tropics of northeastern Australia – Patrick T. Moss, Richard Cosgrove, Åsa Ferrier and Simon G. Haberle
6. Holocene vegetation change at treeline, Cropp Valley, Southern Alps, New Zealand – Matt S. McGlone and Les Basher
7. Vegetation and water quality responses to Holocene climate variability in Lake Purrumbete, western Victoria – John Tibby, Dan Penny, Paul Leahy and A. Peter Kershaw
8. Fire on the mountain: A multi-scale, multi-proxy assessment of the resilience of cool temperate rainforest to fire in Victoria's Central Highlands – Patrick J. Baker, Rohan Simkin, Nina Pappas, Alex McLeod and Merna McKenzie
9. Multi-disciplinary investigation of 19th century European settlement of the Willunga Plains, South Australia – Tim Denham, Carol Lentfer, Ellen Stuart, Sophia Bickford and Cameron Barr
10. Modern surface pollen from the Torres Strait islands: Exploring north Australian vegetation heterogeneity – Cassandra Rowe
11. Surface ∂13C in Australia: A quantified measure of annual precipitation? – Chris S.M. Turney
12. Palaeoecology as a means of auditing wetland condition – Peter Gell
13. Regional genetic differentiation in the spectacled flying fox (Pteropus conspicillatus Gould) – Samantha Fox, Michelle Waycott, David Blair and Jon Luly